Parents who apply for jobs for their kids

What is going on with parents who seem to want to apply for jobs for their kids?

I have had parents come in and ask me when and if we are going to interview their kids who put in applications. (some of them with an attitude) I don't know if they realize that by doing that they are seriously NOT encouraging us to want to hire their kids. Yet they act like there is nothing unusual about it.... and when I say "kid" sometimes it's a 20+ year old.

Much more frequently, however, it is a parent coming in to get an application for their kid.

Makes me wonder when exactly they are going to let them grow up.

...trying to get the feckless freeloaders to get a job and get out of the house.

But don't they realize if they have to go and try to do all the work of applying for the job for them, what makes them think they are going to actually work and hold down the job should they actually get it?

They're probably one step from leaving home and not telling their kids where they went.

Hmm... I didn't realize that was possible... But even if I knew, I would have preferred an F over that route. LOL

from other faculty (I was only part-time).

Edit to add - it wasn't a huge number. But between that, students cheating, text-messaging during class, expecting to pass with zero work... I think I might have been happy to teach college a generation ago, but not now.

usually when the kid had really screwed up. The worse the kid screwed up, the more likely s/he was to have parents who tried to persuade me to let it slide.

This gave me a clue about where the student had acquired his/her attitude problem.

The worst case was a young man who was just plain disrespectful, but always right below the level that I could call him on. (It was usually facial expressions or tone of voice.) Moms' Weekend came along, and his mom arrived early and attended my class on Friday. The two of them sat in the back of the classroom carrying on a conversation throughout the entire class. When I asked them to be quiet, the mother gave me a smirk and a toss of the head and just kept talking.

I can see why you got out of it. I don't see how public school teachers deal with it. Not just the kids, but the PARENTS who think their little darlings can do no wrong. :shrug:

That was why I never had any interest in being a high school teacher - I don't have the skills or interest in being a guidance counselor, psychologist, etc. I though teaching college my energy would go into subject matter, but the amount of personal issues (I have to miss the exam because......, I have to go home because.......) ate up so much of my energy.

My parents didn't even know the names of my professors. So, now--parents are so enmeshed with their
children's lives that they harass their professors?

Parents aren't supposed to know their kids' professors, in my opinion.

These "kids" are adults!

I can only imagine what you've endured. There is a really bizarre, over-the-top sense of entitlement out there these days.
It's really weird. If people don't get what they think they deserve, NOW--people hear about it.

So many people get ticked off if they have to wait in line at the grocery store, or at a stop light--or if you're looking
at something in a store, and they want to look at the same thing. There are many good people out there, but I've noticed
that there is a crop of "I want what I want when I want it!" people who really seem oblivious to their self-centeredness.

and I think articles in Chronicle of Higher Education or somewhere... and in trying to decide which way to go career-wise, it was another thing in the get-out-of-teaching column.

My mom had barely any idea what classes I was taking when I was a student.

that my mother phoned me every night. Her excuse was that she was afraid I'd be lonely. I wasn't. I was busy and happy. I finally begged my brothers to make her stop.

All of us were eager to be on our own, whether we got along with our parents or not.

No one wanted to move back with their parents after graduation, and almost no one did. I don't understand why parents today are so smothering and worst of all, why the children accept it.

College is so expensive these days. It used to be that parents could send their kids to college and
afford the tuition, and the college kids could work part time to help defray the costs.

Now, the tens of thousands of dollars--leave parents still tethered to their children. I bet these parents
give up a lot financially and take out loans to help their kids. This probably makes the parents feel that
these college kids really aren't out on their own yet and independent, and they probably feel more entitled
to keep tabs on their "investment."

The kids probably put up with it, in many cases, because the parents control the purse strings--and they kids
don't have any say.

Just my opinion...

My local coffee shop has a children's play area, and there are often parents in their telling their children how to play. The play area is open, so the parents could sit near it and still watch what's going on. They could supervise without saying (to a four- or five-year-old) "Now put the cows in the truck."

I'm thinking, "Maybe the kid wants to put the blocks in the truck, not the cows, and if he does, so what? Give him some space and go drink your coffee with the grown-ups."

"So many people get ticked off if they have to wait in line at the grocery store, or at a stop light--or if you're looking
at something in a store, and they want to look at the same thing. There are many good people out there, but I've noticed
that there is a crop of "I want what I want when I want it!" people who really seem oblivious to their self-centeredness."

parents simply dropped us off at college and said, "see ya!"


:rofl:


or maybe that's why :think:

helicopter parents. They hover over the kids forever.

I've read stories about college professors getting angry calls from parents because they didn't give their kid an A, parents calling the cafeteria to complain about the food, etc. It's ridiculous.

unfortunately

:crazy:

The parents are overly involved with their children and don't know how to let go. They continue to "hover over" their kids and micromanage their lives long after they become what would normally be considered adults, doing things like:

--filling out their college applications, writing their application essays for them, badgering admissions offices as to the application's status and as to why their child was not admitted, selecting their major and the courses they register for (and demanding to know why they couldn't get into a course), choosing their roommates, calling them every morning to wake them up in time for class, doing their laundry when they bring it home every weekend, arguing with professors over their children's grades, and arguing with registrars about why their child is not graduating on time and with financial aid offices and bursars over getting the bills paid

--filling out job applications for their kids, expecting to be able to sit in on interviews, and calling to ask when their child will be interviewed or why their child wasn't interviewed or hired (oftentimes screaming bloody murder)

--selecting potential mates for their children (and not just because it's what's done in their ethnic culture)

--staying in constant touch with their kids via cell phone so they know what they're doing at all times and in all places

It's a recent thing, and it baffles me entirely. When I became an adult I couldn't wait to get away and grow up and do things on my own and make my own choices. College was also a huge education in how to deal with bureaucracies and cut through red tape to get stuff done when no one else was there to do it for me.

We decided, long ago, that once they were grown & out on their own, we would NOT hover or meddle in their lives.. they know where we are, and they know our schedules..we don;t know theirs, so when they need to talk to us, they can call US :)

Is the security that having overprotective meddling parents provides worth it? I guess on one level it makes things easy, but it also seems so counterintuitive to everything I understand about human development. Shit, I don't think a week went by from the age of 14 on that I didn't scream about how I couldn't wait to get the hell out from under my parents' thumb. Now, I meet 25 year olds who are perfectly content to live with their folks and have them do everything for them. Bizarre.

did this with my nephew. He finally rebelled and joined the military and married a woman he barely knew. Now her and my brother keep asking him when he is going to get divorced. I feel bad for him.

"--staying in constant touch with their kids via cell phone so they know what they're doing at all times and in all places"

In my defense, I can only say that the reason I either call my daughter or have her call me every couple of days is that she's only just turned 20 and is living 1000 miles away and I worry...

on the upside though, she's got a job and an apartment and a life she's creating on her own :)

Then she wanted to know if he was going to get a truck to drive so she wouldn't have to bring him to work. I'm supposed to supply him with a truck for a minimum wage, part time job?

It turned out he was the best applicant - so I didn't hire anyone. I just worked more hours myself.

:eyes:

I can see doing this for a *young* teenager -- in fact, I did do that kind of thing when I was working full time and really, really wanted my daughter and son to be occupied during the day in the summer -- but a twenty-something should be flapping their wings out of the nest pretty smartly.

If I were a professor or potential employer I would wonder what was wrong with the kid, but it might just be a helicopter parent -- in which case, you'd be looking at a pretty bad case of arrested development.

Hekate

19 year old son worked to "talk to them" - meaning shriek in their faces - about their treatment of her darling, who delivered pizzas. I was so flabbergasted I just said "oh".

30 year old sons who can keep their own schedule, and 40 year old husbands who can't pick up the phone and make their own appointments......

Oh my....did that sound a little bitter?:spank: Yeah, I have issues.

I asked her how her job hunt was going. She explained that she was too busy to apply for jobs, so her parents did everything for her: resume, cover letters, post-interview thank-you letters, the works. The only thing they could not do for her was impersonate her at the interviews. I later heard that her interviews were disasters. Seems she was too busy to even read anything her parents had ghostwritten for her so it quickly became obvious in interviews that she had no idea what she's supposedly written in her own job applications!

Considering every job where I've worked they say, if you've misrepresented anything on the application that you're signing now, it's grounds for firing.

I'm going through this with my b/f and his 19 year old son. The kid was supposed to get a job this summer but fucked around instead. The few times his dad forced him to put in an application somewhere he whined like a stuck pig. It's not like there aren't places hiring for low skill jobs. I see Help Wanted signs everywhere. But widdle pookums is too pweshus to soil his hands at a fast food place or grocery store. So now his dad is trying to pull strings with his friends to get him some kind of internship or something that taps into his son's "creativity" and "fosters an entrepreneurial spirit in him". :eyes: :banghead:

I love my b/f dearly but he's a bit of an elitist. His older daughter waits tables at a barbeque restaurant (while attending college) and I can tell it drives him nuts. His progeny are too good for menial work, you know.

The boy's classes start up next week and I have no doubt he'll be off the hook with regard to the job thing. I mean, how can he possibly concentrate on his extremely demanding community college regimen while holding down a job? :eyes:

Me, I was in the Navy when I was the kid's age. I put myself through college and never got a damn thing from my parents once I left home. You can just imagine how badly I want to shove my foot up the kid's ass every time I see him.

...jeez! If I'd been that bad, my parents would have (in fairly quick succession):
1)cut off my allowance
2)refused my use of the car
3)forbidden to see friends
4)removed whatever I was wasting time aroung the house with (if I was lucky, they'd have boxed and stored it, but I'm thinking it'd have been more likely to just go out with the trash)
5)graciously allowed me to pitch a tent in the back yard when they kick me out of the house.

My dad was a bit of an elitist too, but as far as he was concerned, for summer jobs for college-bound kids, the more menial the work, the better. A little something to inspire you toward making sure it didn't become your career.

All of your suggestions are exactly what I've been telling my b/f to do, minus the tent thing which is very clever. Also I agree re the menial work. I keep trying to explain how every young person should have the experience of doing dirty jobs that don't pay well, so at the very least they'll have some respect and empathy for the people who do them.

When hiring was largely an informal exercise and communities were rather small and parents were likely to be acquaintances or even friends or relatives of potential employers, it would have been fairly common for parents to inquire about possible jobs for their children.

This would, still be fairly common in small close-knit communities and in conservative, less economically developed societies.

Now that employers are generally much larger institutions and the hiring process is largely an impersonal and bureaucratic procedure, perhaps this is just one of those anomalies. Something that made perfect sense when personal institutions were far more common and far more a factor in day-to-day life, is now completely out of place in the world of a much more complex, impersonal and bureaucratic hiring process with a computerized personal data base.

I think of this because I have dealt with both the Middle East and with the Philippines, and I have been asked countless times if I could help swing a job for a family member.

I graduated 25 years ago and, except for the uber-well connected, we all got jobs on our own. We had a meritocracy and a much better employment situation. I graduated during a recession, and worked a shit job for a year, was the eager beaver, and got hired on to a good job. My co-workers and supervisors were rooting for me in the bureaucracy.

Now, with jobs PERMANENTLY hard to get for young graduates, I can't blame the parents for getting involved. It galls me no end to think that we have come to this.

Solution: solve the jobs problem at all levels.

(Assuming they can do the work physically.)

Chances are much better you won't have THEIR parents putting in apps!

Another possibility: hiring legal immigrants whose parents are in another country.

the ones who are already working their ass off somewhere else and the ones who don't want to work. I have heard the same from my landlord. And it would seem it is not just late teens/20s that fall into this. I have some freelancer who if I don't ask for what they want to do but rather what I feel they CAN do, then they won't even give me a quote. Eg a guy who thinks he can do web design but his own site is crap and not SEO'd properly but he is a stellar illustrator and he won't quote me for illustration work.

Heard from a friend that their son insisted on dying his hair green the moment school ended "for the summer" and it seemed to be a strategy so that he would not be able to get a job but rather would hang out with his non-working friends for 10 weeks.

as well.

I have a friend who headed a uni. grad. program and she said that parents sometimes called her about their kids!


:wtf: